Someone in another topic wants to pirate an official MMC1 multicart. That got me thinking about how I could make my own MMC1 multicart. It took me one night to develop a framework for a pirate multicart on an SNROM board, which I called Forbidden Four. You need the following ROM images (not included):

The Legend of Zelda or any other 1 Mbit game with the same init code

Two NROM-128 games

One NROM-256 game

The multicart engine itself is free software. I got it to work on FCEU, Nestopia, and Nintendulator. Does this work on the real thing? And why is it called Forbidden Four?

I am familiar with CHR compression, having used PackBits RLE before in Who's Cuter. But it would still be a tight squeeze. I'd have to get at least 1.25:1 compression to put the CHR of five NROM games (menu, bros, ice, galaxian, smb) into a single 32 KiB bank, using an NES-friendly decoder, to make room. Or I'd have to piece together unused parts of LoZ. But I don't find it worth the effort because Galaxian doesn't fit with the theme of the collection, which might make the menu lose HRA points. If you want to try, go right ahead.

Doesn't the Pucrunch unpacker need access to the entire previously decompressed data? The Commodore 64 computer had 64 KiB of RAM, but the NES has only 2 KiB of internal RAM, and I don't want to disturb LoZ's saved data.

Doesn't the Pucrunch unpacker need access to the entire previously decompressed data? The Commodore 64 computer had 64 KiB of RAM, but the NES has only 2 KiB of internal RAM, and I don't want to disturb LoZ's saved data.

<tepples mode on>
What about using the FDS ?
</tepples mode off>

_________________Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.

FDS has a fixed ROM bank in CPU $E000-$FFFF that cannot be mapped out. NROM games would need to be disassembled, shuffled around to fit in $6000-$DFFF, and reassembled. An MMC3-based pirate multi that doesn't use a submapper would have the same problem.

Galaxian isn't in Animal Crossing. (Neither is Pitfall or Golden Axe, but that's another story.) I could (barely) fit Tetramino into the menu segment, but that's not in AC either, and my whole point of making something AC-related is to get as far away from Tetris as I can.

Actually, SXROM could handle, say 2 SNROM games (one of them being 128k, and the other either 256k or 128k), and sevral NROM-256/NROM-128 games for the last 256k/128k. It could even have 2 SOROM games (among several NROM games), or more SNROM games that only switch 32kb ROM banks and don't rely on a fixed bank at $c000-$ffff.
It could be done like that :
BANK 0-6 : SNROM/SOROM game 1
BANK 7-14 : Various NROM games
BANK 15 : SNROM/SOROM game 1 fixed bank, reset code
BANK 16-23 : SNROM/SOROM game 2
BANK 24-30 : SNROM/SOROM game 2 OR various NROM games
BANK 31 : SNROM/SOROM game 2 fixed bank, reset code

_________________Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.

For the record, the title screen looks like this:
Why "Double Crossing"? Google it. Also Google "Body Harvest Moon".

AWal wrote:

...I also would imagine a "Forbidden Five" near impossible...

It would be possible to add Punch-Out!! by converting PxROM to FxROM by duplicating the $A000 bank, converting Zelda to FxROM by replacing MMC1 write subroutines with MMC4 write subroutines, adding a "submapper" to switch between Punch-Out!! and F4 and between CHR ROM and CHR RAM (like TQROM?), and following mostly the same guide. Or you could just ask _Lao@Tzu for a trade code.

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